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The
Zimbabwe Stock Exchange is the latest institution in the southern African
country to be hit by critical foreign currency shortages.

For the past three or so years,
foreign investors have been facing challenges to repatriate investments after
disposing their shares.

This is in addition to failure to
repatriate dividends, as evidenced by beverage manufacturer Delta, which is struggling to send
dividends to major shareholder AB InBev amounting to approximately $50m.

But on Thursday, ZSE investors
woke up to another challenge as stockbrokers failed to access the market’s
automated trading platform after its Dubai based software supplier, Infotech,
withdrew support services due to non-payment.

In a circular to market players
seen by Fin24, the ZSE said it had not been allocated the foreign currency
required for payments to be made in respect of 2018 maintenance and support
fees, and as a result, its software supplier had withdrawn its support services.

This is despite the stock market
being a major contributor to foreign inflows over the years.

"We refer to the above and
confirm having noted anomalies since November 14, 2018, when we tried to access
reports from ZSE Automated Post Trade Reporting System (PTRS). Some reports are
coming out and some are failing completely," said the ZSE.

The bourse said it required
support from Infotech to rectify the matter, adding that the impact of failing
to access the required foreign currency would be amplified if there were a problem
on one of the platforms used to match trades.

"As a brief background to
the matter, the ZSE is obliged to pay maintenance fees for support to Infotech
on an annual basis. ZSE has not been allocated the foreign currency required
for payments to be made in respect of 2018 maintenance and support fees.
Infotech has withdrawn support until payment has been made," the ZSE
circular said.

The ZSE and almost all the
players in the market have not been getting allocations for software licencing, with the ZSE saying it believed it was important to share the information, "as we are all exposed to foreign currency shortages".